Hi,

Is there a correct stroke order for 女? I wonder because I was one of the low percentage sections in the poll...

I tried to reply "me too" but I was told I was dulicating another post...strange.

Anyway,

me too.

The "correct" stroke order is the leader in the poll:

く ノ 一

We allow horizontal-first (一 く ノ) because for me (and other people who I've heard from) it's easier to write that way.

く フ is an optional shortcut for when it's in radical form. I'm not sure how correct it is.

http://v.ku6.com/show/DxVF1iGHM7ye8Rie.html

Here's what he says - I couldn't make out the bit in the middle, any ideas?

今天我们学习女字旁写法。女字旁楷书有三个笔组成，行书可以用两笔组成。第一笔写撇点。第二笔写短撇。？？？。比如我们写一个”好”吧

Basically he's showing how to write 女 when it appears on the side.

hELLO

on the topic of stroke orders... didn't the 忄 radical (for example in 懂) used to be acceptable/required on Skritter as 'shu' and then the dots? And which is the correct way?

I was also curious about the fire radical in 烦 though I feel a little safer about dot-dot-etc. on that one.

Either dot-vertical-dot or dot-dot-vertical are accepted (not sure which is most correct); Maksym and George proved to me with multiple references that vertical-first is not standard despite the center-vertical-then-wings rule. So that was changed a couple weeks ago. We might do a poll for that one, too; this poll is interesting to me.

For 火, it's definitely dot-dot-first.

any chance you can not show the blue dot hint if I do vertical first then? If not, I will probably slowly convert to doing dot-vertical-dot just because i subconsciously follow what Skritter tells me to do :)

Not a big deal either way though.

About the 忄, most Chinese will write it as dot-dot-vertical because the dot-dot can be combined as one single stroke.

Hehe, my tutor from Beijing writes the vertical heart 忄 （竖心旁）as 2-4-4, i.e. vertical-dot-dot. Maybe it should just be flexible for us (regardless of what the "officially correct" way is)...

Argh, I learned both of these wrong and now I need to unlearn my errors. 忄 already complains if we do it the wrong way so I'm gradually getting it. Would it be possible to add an option to our profiles to also complain about 女 if we do it 一 く ノ?

James

Rather than enforcing correct stroke order 100%, I'd rather allow common but not standard orders, like 一 く ノ for 女. If we run a poll and see that a lot of people want vertical-first for 忄, then we'll try to put it back. Our philosophy on stroke order is that it should help learn characters, not get in the way.

I think that preference of variant stroke orders (in order to be more strict) is far below the horizon; sorry. Not very easy to do, currently.

Also, the stroke order for 辆 seems to be funky; I would imagine based on the rules that the left side would have the same stroke order as 车, but I get the blue warning shadow when I write the horizontal stroke on the bottom before the vertical stroke. MGB agrees that it should be the horizontal bar before the vertical. Am I confused?

http://us.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict&wdrst=0&wdqtm=0&wdqcham=1&wdqt=%E8%BE%86

James

I think there is an issue with Skritter"s perceived stroke order of 弱... :)

@jww1066

I did notice that when I was first learning it but I assumed Skritter had it correct because on the radical it is not a horizontal stroke but one from down-left to up-right, which tends to be farther down in the order? Or maybe I just made that up in my head to rationalize it :)

Sorry, my link was broken. Apparently the forum code escaped my % signs. Maybe this will work:

http://us.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?cdqchi=辆

Actually if you click on the left stroke order animation it does the horizontal first... but the other one does the vertical first... they can't even agree among themselves :)

Now I'm thoroughly confused. For the compound 较 Skritter wants me to write it with the lower stroke of 车 first, while for the compounds 辆 and 轻 it wants me to write the vertical stroke first.

MGB is also confused on this point; its two stroke animations for each of these characters consistently disagree.

When 车 is a left-hand side part, the stroke order changes because the last horizontal stroke 横(second-last stroke in 车) changes to a rising stroke 剔。 Does that sound like a plausible explanation?

JWW1066,

mdbg is a great online dictionary, but the stroke order animations it provides are incomplete and inconsistent. For simplified Chinese characters, I use www.archchinese.com, which seems to be the best I can find so far. For traditional Chinese characters, my pick is www.cchar.com. Both of them are free.

archchinese.com says that 辆, 转, and 较 should all be written with the lower "slightly-diagonal" horizontal stroke of 车 before the vertical.

James

I've noticed that too. The component 车 has different stroke orders depending on what side of the character it's on.

Is this right?

o well... I think I've been doing the vertical first for too long now :( It made sense to me because of the slightly diagonal stroke (mikethatguy's theory), but it sounds like that was wrong. I did notice that on Skritter sometimes it allows either (转?) and sometimes suggests vertical first.

Unless that is a new thing.

Wenlin has the following explanation:

"The 丨 vertical stroke is supposed to be written last; but when 车 occurs as a component on the left side of a character (as in 轮 lún 'wheel' for example), then the vertical stroke precedes the last stroke, which becomes a  rising stroke."

I'm also getting that from the two stroke order dictionaries I have, and nciku, and my first-year textbook. MDBG is inconsistent and arcchinese is opposed. Our intent was to have it be as Wenlin describes, but some typos are in there.

I guess we can do another poll on what stroke order people prefer for this to see if we should support a horizontal-first variant order even when it's used as a side radical, but it seems to me that vertical-first is most correct in those cases.

For simplified characters, the standard can be found at http://www.china-language.gov.cn/wenziguifan/scanning/bsgf/bsgf.htm

That page gives the stroke order the way we describe as well:

http://www.china-language.gov.cn/wenziguifan/scanning/bsgf/bsgf-114b.gif

BTW: Thanks for correcting 弱!

Awesome link, @pts!